Technics sx-KN7000 News

Jun 08, 2014

The KN7000 Service Manual is now available on the KN7000 Manuals page. The manual contains all of the circuit board diagrams for the KN7000 as well as component lists and illustrations to show you how to take it all apart. Not that we recommend you do that!

There are still engineers around who are experts in repairing the KN7000 keyboards and you should always get one of them to repair it if necessary. Technics even has a small department in Japan that is able to repair motherboards and some other components from these instruments. Of course your local keyboard dealer would prefer to sell you a new Tyros, Korg or Ketron Audya, so they are not likely to give you details of a suitable engineer (if they know one) but you can still find them on the Internet if you look hard enough.

The service manual also has some interesting illustrations showing the KN7000's five speakers and sound system and I'll post more in the future about that. Possibly of more interest to some of you will be the diagnostics information because the manual describes how to run various tests on the instrument. Again, something that I will be avoiding!

KN7000 Cakewalk Instrument Definition file

If you link your Technics to your computer at all then this is an essential file for you. It represents a massive amount of work and enables you to use the instruments in the KN7000 from Cakewalk and Sonar but many other DAWs and MIDI-centric programs make use of the same file because Cakewalk and Sonar are so popular.

James Bond KN7000 Style

Also available on KN7000.co.uk is an experimental style conversion for your KN7000. I've converted the Tyros 3 Secret Service style to KN7000 format so that you can transfer it to your keyboard using an SD card. Add that to the Secret Agent style already built in to your KN and you'll be ready to write the score for the next 007 movie!

I'm in the process of converting many new styles, so watch this space and please give some feedback on any styles you download. You can join in our forum or post a comment after this blog.

KN7000 Online Manual

One of the major projects I'm working on for this site is the Technics KN7000 online manual. I'm probably a couple of months away from completing that. The online manual will contain most of the information from your paper copy but I'll be supplementing it with hints, tips and website links so that you can really get the best from your instrument.

The screen graphics are a bit disappointing in the paper manual so I wanted to grab them in colour for the website. I've acquired a small video capture device called an 'EasyCAP' to do that (it was only a few pounds on eBay) but it isn't giving great results so far. I've cleaned up the screen capture below in photoshop but it doesn't look anywhere near as good as the actual KN7000 screen. It's only slightly better than the black and white graphics in the original manual (which you can download here).

Back to the drawing board I think. Or maybe a camera.

KN7000 DAWs and other software

Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) software has been something I have wanted to spend some time on for quite a while. Well, I've managed to find a little time to do so recently and I can hardly believe how much effort it takes to research all of the different DAWs, find the files you need (such as the Cakewalk file I mentioned earlier) and set up the KN7000 to work with them.

I've posted a picture of Cakewalk faders below because it is quite amazing that the KN7000 mixer has almost as many features packed into it. The screen grab I posted above is just the first of many pages and you can adjust so many parameters within the KN's onboard software that it is sometimes difficult to know where to start.

Once you have used some of the software available on your computer it actually becomes easier to understand what you can achieve on the KN7000 using the built-in features. The KN7000.ins file also gives you a degree of control over the onboard functions direct from your computer.

I'll be writing a series of articles on all of that on KN7000.co.uk in the near future which will hopefully help you to get it all working together a lot quicker than I did.

Amiga 1200 MIDI

My first foray into the MIDI jungle was on a Commodore Amiga 1200 computer, for which I soldered together my own midi interface and linked it up to my keyboard. This was mainly so that I could produce printed musical arrangements for singers, all of whom worked with live organists or bands in workingmens clubs at the time. Things have come a long way since then and whilst it all still seems extremely complicated to set up the results we can get today are absolutely astonishing compared with way back then.

With careful choice of software and virtual instruments such as Reaper, Addictive Keys, Native Instruments, One Man Band, Band in a Box etc you'll be writing a film score in no time at all. Or at least sounding like one.

TechnicsKN7000.com Members

I'll be making the members signup for the site more visible later today. We've had thousands of visitors from all over the world and it is great getting to know all of you. Not many of you have signed up as members yet but I hadn't made the signup obvious until now. You can still participate in all of the areas of the site if you're not a member but it would be great to get to know you better than that and by signing up you will be notified about updates to the site now and then, so that you don't miss anything.

Keyboard Player Extraordinaire

One such member is Roger M who regularly broadcasts every thursday evening on Swindon 105.5fm (www.swindon1055.com). Rog is a huge KN7000 fan and an excellent musician if I may say so. Please take a look at his websites and give him your support!

Ian Griffin Keyboard Player

Another extraordinary musician is Ian Griffin who I knew many years ago. I probably haven't seen him for decades now. I'll take some time to write about him in a future blog along with some information about BBC Radio 2's the Organist Entertains and some other industry personalities.

Ian uses Ketron instruments at the moment but I remember him well playing many different Technics Keyboards and Organs and I'm sure that he will have used a KN7000 on more than one occasion.

Mike (Admin)

I started playing Technics instruments in my early teens and I've owned several models of their organs and keyboards. As a former professional organist and keyboard player I have played most of the models that I haven't owned, so I'm pretty familiar with most Technics organs and keyboards.

Comments:

Hey Mike ' I have just had time to read your web site and think it is great. We Technics players were left in the cold when they removed the instrument from the market. I used to look at synthzone site but found a lot of links had closed and the 7000 was forgotten . Fortunately there was still sites like Willums but a new site like yours will really I think put the 7000 back onto the wish list . It is still the best instrument of it's kind and I know several muso's who used the 7000 on stage and are now using other brands but everyone has said how they preffered the 7000 and wished it was still available . It is getting extremely hard to get the 7000 now , I have perused the markets as I use mine on stage and rue the day it breaks down and there is none for sale .

Thanks very much for your feedback and encouragement, it's a great motivator to know that you're enjoying the site and getting the most our of your KN7000s.

Willum's site is excellent, I've visited it a great deal over the years and his music is excellent too. I've had my sites planned for years but recently I've noticed so many valuable resources disappearing that I started to feel concerned about all of the information that is disappearing! So that made my mind up to get the sites up and running.

I don't know of a site dedicated to KN7000 gig disks or styles but that's one of the purposes of this site. The site is young yet, having only launched a few months ago, and is part of a group of sites. The companion site,http://KN7000.co.uk/ is the place to discuss new styles and conversions, gig disks and so on. At the moment I'm working on around 1000 styles for the KN7000 that will be available for members over the next few months and I'm hoping that we'll get many other contributions.

The PSR Tutorial website is brilliant and is actually one of the motivators for this site because we need a 'place' for Technics styles, discussion and help, don't we? There are some other great sites around though such as CreateSongStyles which I would recommend.

And not to forget Strawberry Music and Style Disk Warehouse who have some superb commercial styles available, well worth the price in my opinion.

So watch this space because we'll be releasing many KN7000 styles over the next few months (I'll keep you informed in the newsletter, blog and forum). I don't have so much in the way of 'gig disks' (which I believe is a phrase coined by PSR Tutorial) but I'll certainly be making some of those in due course... and most important... all contributions are welcome!

The last few months have been focussed on creating the basis of the sites, adding new features and preparing the way for what I believe can be a fantastic KN7000 community. One of the things I'm working on right now is the ability for any member to have their own page, so that you'll be able to share information, songs, styles etc with each other (though you can already attach files to posts in the forum) so I'm hoping we'll see some of you great KN7000 personalities come to the fore when that goes live.

I'm really pleased to see the site reviving so much interest within the 'circle' of like-minded sites and to be made to feel so welcome. The amount of Internet traffic we're receiving is astounding, which just goes to show how much interest there is in this iconic instrument.

I was thinking further about your message and I realised that there are quite a number of the 'gig disk' type files that you want available on Willum's Website, I believe that the files were created by Roger Mepstead who is also a member here. You can reach Willum's site via our links page and you could contact Roger by private message if he can help further, I'm sure he won't mind.